Policy capacity matters for capacity development: comparing teacher in-service training and career advancement in basic education systems of India and China
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Kidjie Saguin,Yifei Yan |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852320983867 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Policy capacity
matters for capacity
development: comparing
teacher in-service
training and career
advancement in basic
education systems of
India and China
Yifei Yan
London School of Economics, UK
Kidjie Saguin
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Abstract
Capacity development is central to the study and practice of public policy and admin-
istration, but ensuring its effectiveness requires a substantial amount of policy capacity
from government agencies tasked to design and implement it. Identifying the right mix
of policy capacity that governments should possess has been made difficult due to
conceptual and operational problems. This article addresses the gap by developing a
framework that conceptualizes policy capacity as the ability of governments to perform
analytical, operational, and political functions. Drawing on the results of an original
teacher survey and complementary sources, the article shows that variations on dif-
ferent dimensions of policy capacity have led to significant differences in the effective-
ness of capacity development initiatives, especially as perceived by teachers. Therefore,
without understanding and catering to the needs of the targets whose capacity is
Corresponding author:
Yifei Yan, London School of Economics and Political Science, OLD 2.38, Old Building, Houghton Street,
London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: Y.Yan10@lse.ac.uk
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2021, Vol. 87(2) 294–310
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852320983867
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supposedly being developed, capacity development initiatives meant to be supportive
are likely to be dissatisfying and disappointing instead.
Points for practitioners
This article highlights the importance of policy capacity and further unpacks how its
analytical, operational, and political dimensions are essential to the successful delivery
of capacity development. Through a rich account of the comparative case of India
and China, it illustrates that all these dimensions are important, without any one
being a stand-alone panacea. Above all, it is important to pay attention to the recipients
of capacity development programs; without doing so, top-down program delivery igno-
rant of their needs is likely to be poorly received despite the original intention of
developing capacity.
Keywords
basic education, capacity development, China, India, policy capacity
Introduction
1
Capacity development (CD) is crucial in enabling individuals and institutions in
developing countries to effectively design policies, enact programs, and deliver
public services (Burgess, 1975; Hope, 2009). The experience of many developmen-
tal states in Asia and Latin America reinforced the importance of consciously
constructing, nurturing, and maintaining the right mix of policy capacity to
ensure that policy implementation produces its desired outcomes (Haque and
Puppim de Oliveira, 2020). However, CD entails a complex process of coordina-
tion at various levels of the government, which often makes any effort to develop
government capacity very challenging (El-Taliawi and Van Der Wal, 2019).
Thus, delivering effective CD initiatives requires substantial policy capacity on
the part of the government departments tasked to do so. However, understanding
what sorts of policy capacities are actually needed by these government depart-
ments remains largely unexplored due to the conceptual and operational problems
that Honadle (1981) earlier raised about studying capacity. A recent bibliometric
analysis established the fragmentation of the capacity literature as a result of these
problems and concluded that “capacity is widely researched but poorly theorized”
(Saguin et al., 2018b: 10). To generate lessons for policymakers about CD, it is
vital to further conceptualize and empirically examine the policy capacities needed
to make CD initiatives effective.
This article seeks to address this gap by proposing the recent conceptualization
of “policy capacity” as a means to advance the CD literature (Wu et al., 2015).
Using CD for teachers as its empirical focus, the article proposes a framework
built on a multi-level and nested understanding of policy capacity: that capacity of
Yan and Saguin 295
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